They sound right now, but how did our favourite products get their odd names? From iPod and BlackBerry to Twitter and Wikipedia, PC Advisor explains.

Etymology of iPod, BlackBerry and Wikipedia

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They sound right now, but how did our favourite products get their odd names? From iPod and BlackBerry to Twitter and Wikipedia, PC Advisor explains.

Coming up with a great technology product or service is only half the battle these days. Creating a name for said product that is at once cool but not too cool or exclusionary, marketable to both early adopters and a broader audience, and, of course, isn't already in use and protected by various trademarks and copyright laws is difficult-to say the least.

The makers of these 10 tech products-the iPod, BlackBerry, Firefox, Twitter, Windows 7, ThinkPad, Android, Wikipedia, Mac OS X and the "Big Cats," and Red Hat Linux - all have displayed certain amounts marketing savvy, common sense and fun-loving spirit in settling on their products' names. Here are the intriguing, surprising and sometimes predictable accounts of their creation.

iPod: 'Open the pod bay door, Hal'

During Apple's MP3 player development, Steve Jobs spoke of Apple's strategy: the Mac as a hub to other gadgets. Vinnie Chieco, a freelance copywriter Apple hired to help name the gadget before its debut in 2001, fixed on that idea.

He brainstormed hubs of all kinds, eventually coming to the concept of a spaceship. You could leave it, but you'd have to return to refuel. The stark plastic front of the prototype inspired the final connection: pod, a la 2001. Add an "i" and the connection to the Apple iMac was complete.

They sound right now, but how did our favourite products get their odd names? From iPod and BlackBerry to Twitter and Wikipedia, PC Advisor explains.

BlackBerry: Sweet Addictiveness

Canada's Research In Motion called on Lexicon Branding to help name its new wireless email device in 2001.

The consultancy pushed RIM founders away from the word "email", which research shows can raise blood pressure. Instead, they looked for a name that would evoke joy and somehow give feelings of peace.

After someone made the connection that the small buttons on the device resembled a bunch of seeds, Lexicon's team explored names like strawberry, melon and various vegetables before settling on 'blackberry' a word both pleasing and which evoked the black colour of the device.

Firefox: Second Time's a Charm

Choosing a name that evokes a product's essence and is available can be quite complicated, as the Mozilla folks found out. The early version of Mozilla's browser was called Firebird, but due to another open-source project with the same name, the Mozilla elders renamed their browser Firefox, which is another name for red panda.

Why? "It's easy to remember. It sounds good. It's unique. We like it," they said. Best of all? Nobody else was using it.

They sound right now, but how did our favourite products get their odd names? From iPod and BlackBerry to Twitter and Wikipedia, PC Advisor explains.

Twitter: Connecting the Digital Flock 140 Characters at a Time

When cofounder Biz Stone saw the application that Jack Dorsey created in 2006 he was reminded of the way birds communicate: "Short bursts of information... Everyone is chirping, having a good time."

In response, Stone came up with "twttr," and the group eventually added some vowels. It's hard to think of a more evocative name in the tech world than twitter, but what began as what Stone described as "trivial" bursts of communication developed into a powerful means of networking, breaking news, and a forum for the 44th US president's campaign.

Windows 7: Counting on the Power of 7

While Microsoft's next OS has kind of a "ho-hum" name, one has only to look at what happened with the most recent Windows release to understand why Microsoft might have gone back to a tried-and-true naming philosophy: Vista? Ouch. Windows 95 and XP? Those have done much better.

Microsoft's Mike Nash announced the name this way: "Simply put, this is the seventh release of Windows, so therefore 'Windows 7' just makes sense." We're betting that Microsoft execs are hoping that number 7 will deliver on its promise of luck-they could sure use a win after Vista.

They sound right now, but how did our favourite products get their odd names? From iPod and BlackBerry to Twitter and Wikipedia, PC Advisor explains.

ThinkPad: Simplicity Wins Out

The venerable line of PC notebooks rolled on to the scene in 1992. While the concept was spot on, there was turmoil at IBM as to what to call it. IBM's pen-computing group wanted to keep it simple; they liked ThinkPad.

But IBM's corporate naming committee didn't - it didn't have a number, and every IBM product had to have a number, and how would ThinkPad translate into other languages? Due to the chutzpah of the IBMer who unveiled it, ThinkPad won out, and it was a huge hit for IBM, which eventually sold it to Lenovo in 2005.

Android: Secretive, But Still Not Exciting

You'd think the story behind the naming of the Open Handset Alliance's new open-source platform for mobile devices, which includes the brand-new G1 loaded with Google's goodies, would be cool. But, uh, not so much.

Back in 2005, Google quietly acquired a mysterious startup named Android , which had been operating under "a cloak of secrecy" on "making software for mobile phones," reported Businessweek. The result of all Google's secrecy and internet hype was the debut of the T-Mobile G1 on October 22, 2008 - and the Android OS.

They sound right now, but how did our favourite products get their odd names? From iPod and BlackBerry to Twitter and Wikipedia, PC Advisor explains.

Wikipedia: Just What It Sounds Like

According to Wikipedia, the name Wikipedia is a portmanteau of wiki (a technology for creating collaborative websites) and the US spelling of 'encyclopedia' (you remember, those large books that, as kids, we ruthlessly plagiarised for school book reports).

FYI, a portmanteau is a fancy way of saying that we're going to take two words, jam them together, and (hopefully) create a new concept that people will love. So far, so good.

In an illustration of the axiom, "the more things change, the more they stay the same," kids and adults now ruthlessly plagiarise Wikipedia instead of encyclopaedias.

Mac OS X and 'The Big Cats': Catlike Sleekness and Style

Apple's popular Mac operating system X actually denotes the Roman numeral for 10, since it is the OS's tenth release, following Mac OS 9. To the ire of Apple fanboys, many people do refer to it as the letter "X".

More interesting have been the "big cat" code names assigned to each succeeding Mac OS X release that have stuck with Apple's marketing: Cheetah (10.0), Puma, Jaguar, Panther, Tiger, and the current kitty, Leopard.

Snow Leopard has been assigned for the 10.6 release, with rumours that Lynx and Cougar are in the works.